The present invention relates generally to producing multi-color chocolate products with fine definition.
The chocolate candy industry dates back two hundred years to the time in which cocoa or chocolate was first converted into a solid edible substance. Since that time, a wide variety of methods have been developed for casting the chocolate into blocks having different configurations. For the most part, however, these molding techniques have remained virtually unchanged.
Generally, female molds have been used in which the chocolate in liquid form is deposited and permitted to harden into the desired solid shape. These molds have been made from a wide range of materials, such as metal, wood, rubber, plastic-like compounds, and the like
At the present time, the chocolate industry is generally limited to the reproduction of letters, such as the addition of the trademarks "Hershey's" or "Nestles" with a single chocolate color, which is in very broad detail. This is generally accomplished by casting the chocolate bar with the appropriate markings, or by using expensive molds which create very fine detail but are limited to one color, the expense of which can easily be accounted for in view of the mass production of such chocolate bars. Reference is also made to U.S. Pat. No. 4,200,658 which discloses a method of making a single color chocolate bar with a detailed design.
Recently, there has been a development of multi-color chocolate products. For example, a chocolate bar with the written message "Happy Birthday" has been produced, where the basic bar and the message are both made of chocolate, but of two different colors. This is the most difficult and costly type of chocolate to fabricate, and does not produce consistent results.
For making a two-color chocolate bar, it is known to use a negative mold having recesses for the message. This is accomplished by first "painting" in the recesses of the mold which, for example, spell "Happy Birthday", with chocolate of a first color. Then, after the first colored chocolate cools, chocolate having a second color is poured into the mold. The result is a two-color chocolate bar.
However, the letters which result are usually very broad stroked, that is, it is difficult to obtain very fine lettering. In addition, the edges between the letters and the background of the second color chocolate are usually blurry or non-descript. This latter disadvantage results, at least partially, from the fact that the molds that are used are inexpensive vacuum formed plastic molds, whereby the recesses in each mold are produced with rounded edges where they meet the planar surface of the mold. The reason for inexpensively vacuum forming such molds is because the multi-color chocolates produced thereby are not mass-produced, but rather, are intended only for few specialty uses at most, so that the cost of higher quality molds would not be offset by such minimal usage.